Website-Building, Basic Facts and Best-Practice Today
Every website sits on a server somewhere, operated by a company usually called an “I. S. P.” (Internet Service Provider). Because CopyDragon webwriters are in the internet business, we also have servers of this kind, although we don’t normally provide hosting services to the public at large. (We prefer to keep our servers private, used only by people we know.)
There are many ways to build a website. (I’ve built around 200, since around 1996, using over a dozen ways of building.) As best I can tell, the best way to build a website these days is to use a WordPress website.
The WordPress method was originally developed for blogs, but now is used for normal sites as well as blogs. I have 30-50 websites, and over a dozen client websites, and I now use WordPress to build every one of them.
The main three advantages of WordPress are:
- The website owner can easily make changes to any page, can quickly add an article, can easily upload a picture, and everything on the site adjusts itself and that new page or new article or new picture becomes part of the website with one click.This means you’re not the hostage of your web developer. You can back up the entire site to your own computer, and you could at any time move the entire site to a different ISP, a different location. You’re in control. (And it saves money, too.)
. - The WordPress organization has a complete staff, who (for free) make updates to block hackers. This means we don’t have to work, work, work on security. (This means your site is safer, and it saves money, too.)
. - Because WordPress was the winner of the “blog software wars,” there is a huge amount of plug-in things that we can easily and quickly add that makes Google happy. And when Google is happy, Google likes to send people to your website. (And because these things can be added quickly, and they update themselves automatically, again this costs less than having to go do things by hand over and over again down the road.
Four Ways to Get a Website Built
- 1) If you wish to learn about web building and wordpress you can do so. It can take a while, so only do this if you’re not in a hurry, and you want to invest lots of time, and you like this kind of computery thing.
. - Get a friend to do it for you. Now your friend may or may not know much about how to build a *good* website, but this can be low cost, because it might even be free.
. - Hire a webdesigner, or a wordpress website guy. You can find them easily, and some wordpress website guy will build a site for as low as $300-$500. Designers usually charge over $3000 for a custom-built site outside of the WordPress world. And what you get will be a website. (But it may not be built very well for your marketing objectives; more on this to follow.)
. - Hire CopyDragon webwriters. We are very skillful, and we begin with a marketing mindset. Working together, we’ll build it so that it will automatically and unconsciously appeal to your target customer, it will appeal to Google, and it will be built to support your *business.* It will cost a fraction of what a good web-designer will charge for a custom website built from scratch ($3000 and up), and it will work much better for actually bringing you business and income.
Three Example Websites
Here are three sites we built over the last year —
- Tantra Yoga Online, http://tantrayogaonline.com (the “blog” for source school of tantra yoga)
- Spiritual EFT, http://lightningeft.com (a website for some seminars that my partner and I were hosting)
- Helicopter Tours in Siskiyou County, http://lakeshastahelicopters.com (a website for a helicopter touring company)
These all use the wordpress format, and all were built for less money than a traditional web-designer, and all three work much better for supporting the business.
Be sure to see How to Build a Website, Part Two, the Insider Information on How to Get the Life You Want
